Canadian Private Equity Fund Setting Up New U.S. Office REIT

Vancouver, British Columbia-based private equity firm Second City Capital Partners is seeking to form a new publicly held office REIT in the United States.

If its initial public stock offering to raise $150 million is approved, the new City Office REIT would initially own six office complexes comprised of 16 office buildings in the Boise, ID, Denver, CO, Portland, OR, Tampa, FL, Allentown, PA, and Orlando, FL, metro areas with a total of 1.85 million square feet of net rentable area.

Janney Montgomery Scott and Wunderlich Securities are underwriting the IPO and the REIT intends to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "OFFC."

In addition to targeting markets with favorable economic growth trends, growing populations with above average employment growth forecasts, SCCP said the new REIT’s target markets would also include a large number of government offices, large international, national and regional employers across a diversified set of industries, low-cost centers for business operations, proximity to large universities and increasing office occupancy rates.

City Office REIT also believes there is a lower participation of large institutional investors in its target markets because they generally have concentrated on gateway markets, which are commonly defined as New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Boston and San Francisco.

About 62% of the proposed REIT's base rental revenue from its initial properties is derived from federal or state government tenants.